On the Problem of Empathy (review)

274 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY s~paration des pouvoirs. La d~monstration de Walter Rex est tout &fair convaincante et il est fort savoureux de constater que l'influence considerable exerc6e par l'article "David" au XVIII e si~cle est li~e ~ une m~connaissancc complete de ses intentions. Mais en histoire des idles les contre-sens sont souvent plus f6conds que les lectures correctes. Les fautes d'impression ne sont gu~re nombreuses dans ce livre; citons pourtant p. 106, ligne 20, un mot saut~ qui rend un peu obscure une citation d'Amyraut: il faut lire "...que Dieu gu~rit de l'aveuglement," et p. 247, ~ la premiere ligne de la citation, une coquille: il faut lire "reprendra" (et non pas "r~pandra"). J'ajouterai encore que ma paresse prefers que les r~f~rences soient aussi completes que possible: ~ l'indication de la page de l'ddition Prat des Pens~esDivcrses, j'aurais trouv~ commode que s'ajout~t cells du num~ro du chapitre. Mais ce qu'il est difficile de fairs passer dans un compte-rendu, qui a sans doute doan~ bon droit l'impression que l'ouvrage de M. Rex est assez technique, c'est que, bien que fort ~rudit, il se lit avec beaucoup d'agr~ment; l'auteur aun talent d'exposition, un discret humour, un style si ais~ et si clair, que ses Essays apportent ~.leur lecteur, outre une riche information et des discussions tr~s aigu~s, un v6ritable plaisir litt~raire. Le secret, qui fut celui de Bayle, de donner une bonhomie charmante ~ l'6rudition a ~t~ bien pros d'etre retrouv~ par son commentateur moderne. ELISABETH LABROUSSE Paris, France On the Problem o] Empathy. By Edith Stein. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964, Pp. 113 -t- xxi. Translated by Waltraut Stein, with a Foreword by Erwin W. Straus.) This book is a translation of Edith Stein's inaugural dissertation, which she did under Edmund Husserl during his early years at the University of Freiburg. In conception and execution , the study is explicitly phenomenological and shows that Stein had an excellent command of Husserl's thinking as well as of the many philosophical and psychological contributions to the theory of empathy--especially those of Lipps, Miinsterberg, Geiger, Scheler, and others. The closeness of Stein's reading of and work with Husserl can be seen throughout the study, and is all the more noteworthy inasmuch as her work parallels the second volume of Husserl's Ideen1to a remarkable degree, although she maintains that she did not see it before the completion of her own study. It was, indeed, this "special circumstance" which, as she says, "prevented me from once more thoroughly revising the work before publication" (p. 3). Appointed as Husserl's Privatassistentin, Stein was entrusted with the task of editing several of his most involved manuscripts. ~ She was, then, not only a close student of Husserl but an excellent and original phenomenologist in her own right---as the bibliography at the end of the text shows (cf. pp. 108-109). The publication of the present study is significant in at least several respects. First, it provides an important historical background for later phenomenological and existential studies (of the "living body," intersubjectivity, the self, and the like)2 Second, it makes a substantial contribution to the critical explication of these issues and the theories about them, in a way which is highly relevant to current discussions. Indeed, the central problem which Stein poses is still very much with us: How are we to Left unpublished by him, and later published as Husserliana, Vol. IV: Ideen zu einer reinen Ph~nomenologie und Ph~inomenologi~chen Philosophie, Zweites Buch, Phiinomenologische Untersuchungen zur KonsLitution, hrsg. yon Marly Biemel (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1952). J Among them, the second volume of Ideen, and the lectures on time, translated into English by James S. Churchill as The Phenomenology o] Internal Time Consciousness (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1964). s A good case in point is Merleau-Ponty. As the translator notes, "Since Merleau-Ponty had access to the same unpublished manuscript of Volume II of Ideas, a number of his most important and interesting formulations take on a...